He was familiar with music and was himself famous for his musical talent; with the dulcimer, his national instrument, he had once wandered from estate to estate and amazed his hearers by his playing and his songs, for he sang well and with a trained voice. Though a Jew, he had a fairly good Polish pronunciation, and was particularly fond of the national songs, of which he had brought back a multitude from each trip over the Niemen, kolomyjkas70 from Halicz and mazurkas from Warsaw. A report, I do not know how well founded, was current throughout the district, that he was the first to bring from abroad and make popular in that time and place the song which is to-day famous all over the world, and which was first played in the Ausonian land to Italians by the trumpets of the Polish legions.71 The talent of song pays well in Lithuania; it gains people's affection and makes one famous and rich. Jankiel had made a fortune; sated with gain and glory, he had hung his nine-stringed dulcimer upon the wall, and settling down with his children in the tavern he had taken up liquor-selling. Besides this he was the under-rabbi in the neighbouring town, and always a welcome guest in every quarter, and a household counsellor: he had a good knowledge of the grain trade on the river barges;72 such knowledge is needful in a village. He had also the reputation of being a patriotic Pole.73
He was the first to bring to an end the quarrels between the two taverns, which had often led even to bloodshed, by leasing them both. He was equally respected by the old partisans of the Horeszkos and by the servants of Judge Soplica. He alone knew how to keep an ascendancy over the terrible Warden of the Horeszkos and the quarrelsome Apparitor; in Jankiel's
